The New Era Of Interactive Health

A few weeks ago at the TED conference in Long Beach, after giving a talk on the “Untapped Power of the Smile,” which later turned into a guest blog post on Forbes.com, a bunch of TEDsters approached me to ask what I’m doing outside of researching smiles. I told them a little about my health-related angel investing and advising (with companies like Massive Health and Doximity), helping launch Rock Health (the first-ever Interactive Health incubator), and about my new company HealthTap.

Each of these conversations sparked a vibrant discussion of how the consumer health industry is being redefined in a very powerful way. Timing is everything, and we all agreed that we’ve finally reached a tipping point where the right mix of technology, innovation and motivation are creating an opportunity for real, positive disruptions.

The Right Mix of Converging Trends

In the past few months a unique opportunity in health has emerged, uniting new apps and devices, vast amounts of data, a vibrant online social dialogue and new engagement mechanisms.

Hundreds of thousands of smart phones and tablets are being activated everyday, fostering the development of new apps and opportunities for engineers, designers, entrepreneurs and investors. Inexpensive access to the cloud is facilitating fast and easy ways to collect, store and process data for insights and personalization. The online health conversation, in social networks and beyond, is becoming increasingly lively and commonplace. The wide adoption of interactive games alongside the deployment of game dynamics in a variety of mobile and online applications are resulting in levels of engagement we’ve not seen before. This convergence is creating fertile ground for a new, promising, and exciting era in health – an era that, when describing it to my fellow TEDsters, I coined as “Interactive Health.”

A New Field is Born: “Interactive Health”

Interactive Health is all about you, the consumer, and about your everyday engagement in your health and well-being.